


Through the Gate

by SocratesStoleMySocks



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Adopted Alex Rider, Alex is not having a great day, But neither is anyone else, Gen, Goa'uld (Stargate), NID (Stargate), Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Book 9: Scorpia Rising (Alex Rider), Stargate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28489836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SocratesStoleMySocks/pseuds/SocratesStoleMySocks
Summary: Alex has settled into life in America with the Pleasures. He's doing well in school, engaging in his old hobbies, and only occasionally stumbling across nefarious plots. But after spending the morning surfing, Alex stumbles upon a conspiracy that spans galaxies and poses a greater threat to Earth than any of his previous mission ever did.
Relationships: Daniel Jackson & Jack O'Neill, Joe Byrne & Alex Rider, Sabina Pleasure & Alex Rider, Samantha "Sam" Carter & Daniel Jackson & Jack O'Neill & Teal'c
Comments: 13
Kudos: 48





	1. Stirring Up a Snake's Nest

Alex likes life with the Pleasures well enough. It’s quieter for one and without the constant interference from MI6 he's able to focus on his schoolwork and pick up some of his old hobbies. MMA at a local gym, rock climbing with the school's climbing team, and surfing with Sabina on the weekends that she's not on a date with her boyfriend.

He’s on his way back to the Pleasures house after an early morning surf session when he sees something weird. Alex knows he should ignore it, knows that half of the trouble he got into back in England was caused by his curiosity more than 6’s meddling, like the incident with Skoda. But Sabina is on a weekend camping trip with her boyfriend and he hasn’t really bonded with any of the kids at his new school, so the only thing waiting for him at the Pleasures is his homework and a few language books he checked out from the library to see if it's worth the effort of learning a new one. 

Homework is far less interesting than whatever is happening on the edge of the golf course near the beach so Alex hides his board in some bushes and hopes its still there when he's done tailing the man that came furtively creeping out of one of the shelters at the edge of the course with a heavy looking box. The man is probably just a drug dealer using the shelter as a dead drop but something about him and the box is sending alarm bells ringing in Alex’s head.

The man lugs the burnished metal box into a golf cart idling nearby and slinks into the driver's seat. Alex creeps through the shrubbery to get a better look at the man and the box, and from his new vantage point it's easy for Alex to see what the box reminds him of. The heavy, sealed, metal box is eerily reminiscent of the crates used to transport Sayle’s modified virus in Cornwall, but the golf cart goes puttering away before he can discern any more clues to what the contents might be.

The thing about golf carts is that they can actually move pretty fast if the driver wants them to, as Alex had learned one weekend when Mr. Pleasure had brought him golfing with a few of his coworkers. Luckily for Alex, the man in the cart is driving with incredible care, probably worried about damaging the contents of the box. The cart is still moving at a good clip though, and Alex struggles to both keep up and find enough cover to not be spotted by the man or any of the early morning workers on the golf course. 

Alex is panting by the time he makes it to the other side of the golf course, where the man has ditched the cart and begun walking towards the San Francisco State University campus. It's not that important for Alex to go unseen now, he’s 16 and close enough in age to pass for one of the few Uni students rushing to the library or labs to get some last minute work done over the weekend. Keeping a careful distance back from the man Alex continues his pursuit as the man strides through the bee garden and makes for the Science Building.

As the man approaches his destination Alex starts wondering if he had over-reacted, perhaps the man is just an especially suspicious professor of science that was running an experiment on the nearby golf course. But Alex is already there and the man still seemed like he was up to something he shouldn't be. Over the course of Alex’s (forced) career with MI6 he had developed an instinct for this kind of thing, although the therapist the Pleasures, the CIA, and MI6 had set him up with called it an unhealthy sense of paranoia.

The man entered the building and Alex waited a few seconds before slipping in behind him, watching the man descend the stairs to the basement. A quick glance at the sign posted on the stairway informed Alex that all the basement laboratories were closed for deep cleaning over the next month to address a recent chemical leak. A suspicious man, with a box sealed against biological contaminants, descending into a closed basement was the last warning sign Alex needed to pull out his phone and start dialing.

  
  
  
  


Joe Byrne had given Alex the number to his personal cell phone upon Alex’s arrival in the US, it was the man's way of saying he was looking out for Alex. It was also a smart move as the deputy director of an intelligence agency. Everyone in the intelligence world knew that Alex Rider was essentially a heat seeking missile when it came to conspiracies, he hunted them down and then destroyed the cartel, or terrorist operation, or whatever it was that he had found with a great deal of fire and explosions. 

Joe Byrne, by giving Alex a personal line, was hoping to stay on top of Alex’s more destructive problem solving methods. Surprisingly, it had worked out fairly well so far. Alex would stumble across a criminal operation and would drop the intel off with Joe by texting or calling, and on one memorable operation by turning up on his front porch bleeding with a dozen rescued children trailing after him like ducklings. It was, in all honesty, a bit like having a pet cat leave dead mice at his door, except the mice were packets of information that even Joe’s best analysts and agents hadn’t managed to dig up, but Joe Byrne had come to accept that Alex Rider was just like that.

Joe actually has the whole weekend off for once, he had pulled enough strings and called in a few favors to make sure he could spend a quiet weekend at home with his wife helping clean up the kitchen and attempting to fix the leaky part of the shed roof. It was only natural that, given the effort he had put into getting the weekend off, a Rider situation would arise. Still, he held out hope that all Alex was bringing him intel on was a nice, simple drug ring that he could pass off to the FBI without further involving himself. The fact that Alex had called instead of texting was his first hint that this would not be the case. Alex only called if a situation was urgent, like most teenagers he preferred to communicate through text whenever possible.

With his hopes for a nice calm weekend withering faster than his brief attempt at a garden Joe stepped outside to take the call. 

Alex was talking the moment he hit the accept call button. “University of San Francisco, in the closed basement of the Science Building. I tailed a man - mid forties, brown hair, about 2 meters tall - from the golf course. He picked up a package - metal box, appears to be biologically sealed - from a shelter at the edge of the course.”

There was a quiet clattering sound over the phone, and Joe assumed Alex was shifting to get a better view of the man he had followed.

“One moment” Alex continued “I’m sending a picture of the man and the box”

“Wait Alex don't hang up!” 

“Joe. You can take and text a picture while remaining on a call, I don’t need to hang up” Alex managed to sound remarkably like Joe’s youngest child when she had to explain civilian tech to him. Joe supposed that was proof that Alex really was a teenager despite everything that had happened to him. 

His phone buzzed with an incoming text and he cautiously pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the image Alex had sent. The box did look like it was intended for transporting dangerous biological samples and the man looked vaguely familiar, it was likely that a picture of the man had been in one of the many files that came across Joe's desk.

Alex spoke again. “He’s unsealing the box, ten digit code - oh ew, it's some kind of worm thing, looks like something that you'd only find in Australia or the island with the weird trees - I'll try to get another picture”

There was more quiet rusting over the phone - and then abruptly, a series of thuds and loud cursing before the line disconnected. Alex had been discovered.

Joe called the office immediately. They needed to get boots on the ground where Alex was ASAP, both to protect the teen and to find out what catastrophe waiting to happen that Alex had discovered this time.


	2. How not to Travel

Alex wakes up and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The world is spinning around him and even the faint amount of light in the gloomy room he's locked in sears his eyes. Situations like these, however, are old hat to Alex and whoever took him didn’t even bother to tie him up so he pries himself off the ground and leans against the nearest wall as his legs tremble, fighting to keep him upright. 

The room is dim and small, it looks an awful lot like a backroom of an auto shop or warehouse. There's a door, presumably leading out into the rest of the building, on the far side of the tiny room. He trys the door and finds it locked from the outside. There's nothing in the room that can be used to pick to lock or pry open the door, and until his legs stop shaking Alex can’t attempt to kick the door down. He resigns himself to waiting for his captors and settles next to the door so he can listen to what is happening outside the backroom.

Alex doesn’t have to wait long before he hears the heavy tread of feet head towards him. From where he’s been listening he’s heard five distinct voices, four with American accents and one that he can’t place, only one of the American voices is female. He knows he can’t fight his way out in his current state, weaponless and with a likely concussion, especially not against five adults.

He stays slumped against the doorway but shifts so his feet are under him, he might need to get up fast, just because he’s not fighting yet doesn’t mean he won't be ready. 

The man that opens the door has a military bearing, the one that actually walks in has a politician's bearing. ‘Politician’ sneers down at him, and Alex can already tell that this is going to be an unpleasant conversation even as the guy that opened the door moves to drag Alex out of the backroom.

5 hours later, tied to a chair in front of a massive metal circle with weird markings, Alex wishes the politician prick in a fancy suit and copious amounts of gold jewelry hadn’t decided to prove him right. Although, in a refreshing change of pace the bastard had beat Alex himself during the impromptu interrogation instead of having his goons do it. The guy is weirdly strong though, so it actually might have been better if the goons had done the beating.

The questions had been fairly standard according to Alex’s experiences with being captured on missions: Who are you? Who sent you? What do you know? Who were you calling? etc. Alex plays up how frightened he is, projecting ‘nosy, frightened teenager’ as much as he can. 

He lies about his name and only tells them he called his ‘Uncle Joe’ when they ask about that. The rest of their questions he answers truthfully, he barely knows anything and no one told him to follow the creepy professor, although he’s wishing he hadn’t now. 

They run him through the same questions dozens of times, waiting for him to change his story, the guy that looks like a politician smacks him around if he hesitates for too long. Alex does hesitate and does change his story, but only in the way that's expected of a stressed out kidnapping victim - remembering details that weren’t there, forgetting the route he followed the professor from the golf course, changing the time he left the beach, freezing up and stuttering every once in a while.

Hours later they’re satisfied that he’s telling the truth and Alex, bruised but otherwise unharmed, exhales shakily in relief. There are three general options for what happens now: they kill Alex immediately (this would be bad, but he’s loosened his bindings enough that he might be able to escape before they execute him), they lock him back in the room before deciding what to do with him (not the worst, but still not great), or they move him to a new location before dealing with him (this is Alex’s preferred option because it gives him more time and opportunity to escape). 

In the chair a few meters from the base of the big metal ring Alex watches his captors run through these options. The man that had opened the door first wants to threaten Alex into silence and let him go, one of the other men, who Alex has creatively named ‘Bad Haircut’, is making ominous comments about Alex being useful, and ‘Quiet Guy’ had simply grunted (Alex couldn’t tell if that was agreement or disagreement and refused to draw attention to himself by asking). 

The only lady in the group wants to kill him and be done with it, she’s a nostalgic reminder of Alex’s classmates from his brief time at Malagosto with her dedication to vicious efficiency, and despite how little Alex wants that ruthlessness aimed at him he can at least respect it. 

All four of them are watching ‘Politician’, waiting to see their boss' verdict. The man's eyes flare gold as he rakes them with a considering glance and Alex wonders if his concussion is worse than he thought. 

On the other hand, the spooky gold eyes could have been caused by whatever they were doing with the pointy looking not-worms. Alex was willing to put money on ‘mad scientists doing human experimentation’ as the conspiracy he had found this time. It was too bad they had taken his phone because now he couldn’t call to tell Joe to put him down for that in the CIA betting pool he wasn’t supposed to know about.

‘Politician’ settles on what to do with Alex with a sadistic glint in his eye. “Toss him through the gate, any address will do. He won’t survive long and even if he does he won't be able to tell anyone from here anything” 

‘Well’ Alex muses internally ‘I think that counts as being moved to a new location’

Quiet Guy strides up to the clearly improvised consol wired to the big metal ring and starts mashing buttons. The ring makes a deafeningly loud grinding noise as it spins, not helping Alex’s headache in the least. When he's done the ring releases a liquid that splashes outward horizontally before whooshing back to fill it, looking for all the world like a very large hot tub that has been tipped on its side.

If Alex had access to the CIA betting pool right now his money would definitely stay on ‘mad scientists’ but he's pretty sure he’d have to change the specifics of his bet from ‘human experimentation’ to ‘teleportation’ or both. 

Alex is really hoping that A. a commotion happens so he can make a run for it before they chuck him through the glowy metal ring, and failing that, B. he’s not the first human trial of this thing, and C. that it spits him out somewhere like L.A. and not somewhere like Alaska, or Everest.


	3. Paranoia is a (former) Teen-Spy's Best Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long gang, I've had one heck of a month! I know it's a bit of a filler chapter but things will be kicking up a notch soon.

Getting chucked through a glowy portal by a mad scientist’s goons is not Alex’s preferred way of being released from captivity. Especially since he was still tied to the chair when he was thrown in.

Traveling through the portal itself was actually less awful than Alex expected considering he had survived and not been turned into paste or a vaguely Alex-shaped 200 piece jigsaw puzzle. The tumble onto the hard packed ground also loosened the rope tying him to the chair even further than he had already managed while his captors were debating what to do with him. It takes less than a second to slip out of the ropes.

Alex does feel like he's been microwaved and deep frozen simultaneously, and the world is once again spinning, but he's pretty sure that's a product of the concussion and the hard landing, not a side effect of the portal.

The air is warm but dry, and he can still breathe so at least one of his hopes was answered and he wasn’t spat out on the top of Everest. Further assessment of his surroundings shows that he's somewhere remote, waist high grass surrounding him on all sides for about a mile or so. To the right there's a mixed pine and deciduous forest, and behind him there are the gentle slopes of small hills. To the front and left are more plains, as far as he can see. 

The area he landed in is a semicircle of barren earth, with a wide dirt pathway leading towards the forest.

Wondering if he can go back through the portal, Alex plucks a long stem of grass to test it. Not quite impulsive enough to leap through himself. 

Walking up the steps to the rippling, shimmery portal Alex stabs the grass stem about halfway through and then tries to pull it out. There's nothing there, the grass that went into the portal is gone, completely crumbled away with no sign of it left.

Alex swallows, suddenly grateful to not have charged in himself.

The portal is his best landmark, and then the dirt trail, but Alex has no clue where he is, no cellphone to call anyone, no food to eat, very little water to drink, and is still in his swim trunks, flip-flops, and the hoodie he wears to and from the beach for his early morning surf sessions. Not exactly survival gear, even in a temperate climate. 

His captors had searched him but only took the small pocket knife he carries everywhere, leaving the rest of his stuff with him. He still has his house keys, and the hydroflask Sabina gave him with a joke about being a real Californian which is more useful than nothing. There's a small tube of sunscreen in his hoodie pocket too, which is more of a blessing in a survival situation than most people would think. 

There's also the chair, now broken, and the rope used to tie him up. The rope will be fantastically useful, and he finishes up twisting off one of the battered aluminum chair legs to use as a flimsy but functional weapon if necessary.

Joe has almost definitely reported him missing by now considering the way the call dropped, even if the Pleasure’s won’t for another few hours. There are people looking for him, but Alex knows from long experience that he can't rely on that even when the people looking for him know to account for portals in their search parameters.

It's easy to start walking once he’s picked a direction. The road is the most obvious way to go, a clear sign of civilization and easier walking in general. 

It also leads to the forest which is more likely to have water to refill his bottle, along with all the useful things one can use to survive in a forest. Better cover, wood for fire, edible vegetation if you know how to identify it (and if Ian hadn’t taught him how to do that the SAS definitely had), and small game if you can figure out how to set snares. If Alex is really lucky he might be able to improvise better shoes, even if it's a longshot.

It’s a little over a mile to the edge of the forest, a distance that takes Alex about 20 minutes, slowed from his usual pace by his poor footwear. The shade is a relief, as is getting away from the scratchy rustling grass. 

He knows it just the stress of the entire situation settling in now that he’s out of immediate danger. But the noise of the grass in the wind makes it hard to listen for potential threats, and there's a prickling along his spine that makes him feel like he’s being watched.

The forest is more open than Alex expected. The trees are somewhat spread out, and there's little undergrowth. Scorch marks on the trees point to a forest fire in the past that burned quick and low enough to burn out the undergrowth but leave the trees relatively untouched. The surrounding grassland would have grown back quickly from the fire but it was taking longer for the undergrowth to return. The path continues its winding progress through the trees without any additional clue as to where it leads. He keeps walking.

There's something just vaguely off about the forest. Alex can’t pinpoint what makes it seem so strange but it doesn’t feel like any of the forests he's been in before, and considering all the places he’s found himself in over the years that's saying a lot.

Even the cover of the trees doesn’t relieve Alex’s uneasy feeling. He finds himself glancing over his shoulder far too frequently as he moves through the trees and has to force himself to stop after the 5th time he trips over a root. Thinking back to how certain his captors were that tossing him through the ‘gate’ would finish him off only makes Alex more nervous. 

At the time he assumed his captors thought he wouldn’t survive because he was being sent to a remote location with no supplies and that nature would do the dirty work of killing him for them. Given that he had been dropped right in front of clear signs of civilization and the lack of hostile environment, such as extreme temperatures or harsh geography Alex was beginning to think that there was something more afoot about his current situation. 

Maybe they had sent someone after him to kill him when he didn’t expect it, but why not simply kill him while he had been tied up in the chair at their mercy. There was no point in worrying about how exactly his captors had planned for him to be taken out of the equation until he had more information. Alex would just have to be cautious and avoid attention from anyone else who used this road and get a better grasp on the situation that he had tripped into this time.


	4. Alex Liked Space Better the First Time

The sun is dipping lower and lower as the afternoon progresses and Alex knows he’ll need to figure out where to sleep for the night soon. Currently he’s hunched over a stream filling up the hydroflask Sabina gave him. Alex is already dreading how smug Sabina is going to be about the bottle saving his life. 

Briefly he wonders if he’ll have to rupture the vacuum seal of the hydroflask when he boils the water in it in case the fire makes it explode or do something equally unpleasant. And then he gets tackled out of nowhere. The sound of the stream having covered up the sound of his attacker's approach - so much for keeping his head down and avoiding the locals.

Alex twists violently out of the grip his unknown attacker had around him and goes splashing into the shallow stream. The man that attacked him stands on the shore glaring and snarls something in what sounds a hell of a lot like the language that his kidnappers from the warehouse were using. He’s wearing weird armor too - unhelpfully Alex’s brian suggests that he's found himself in another Feathered Serpent video game situation.

Then Alex doesn't have time to think as the man lunges at him again. He’s never fought a man in metal armor before and finding weak spots is tricky, the last thing Alex wants to do is to break his hand by punching one of the metal plates. He slams his palm under the man's chin and watches as he goes stumbling backwards, chasing his advantage Alex lashes out with a solid front kick and the man goes down, but Alex must have gotten too close and goes tumbling to the ground as well as his ankle is hooked and pulled by one of the downed man's feet.

His opponent heaves up onto his feet while Alex is still trying to get his breath back on the ground. In a real fight outside of competition and practice, the last place you want to be is on the ground. Alex feels a frisson of fear but forces it to the side in favor of action. He had practiced with the wrestling team at his and Sabina's new school a few times before deciding that wrestling wasn’t a fighting style that suited him, he's grateful for those practices now as he rolls to his knees and shoots in from the ground in a move he must have drilled dozens of times in his first wrestling practice. Arms hooking behind the man's knees Alex drives him over and onto the ground again and begins to shift so he can pin him and try to get a few answers out of the man. 

And then for the second time in as many days Alex is struck from behind.

Alex is really sick of waking up in cells after being knocked out. He doesn’t even want to think about how much damage his head has taken in the past two days, and not just because thinking hurts at the moment.

There's a groan from across the dim cell he's found himself in and Alex slowly lurches upright so he can see his new roommate. He's floppy haired and wearing clothes that look fairly militant but the patch on his shoulder doesn't look like any that Alex can tie to military or paramilitary organizations that he's encountered. It does look a lot like one of the symbols he had seen on the portal.

The man, who looks just as bad as Alex feels, is assessing him right back but with considerably less wariness than Alex is feeling.

“Hi,” the floppy haired man says “I’m Daniel” 

Daniel is speaking slowly and gesturing along like he thinks Alex doesn’t speak English, which is another checkmark in the ‘teleported very far away’ category.

Sardonically Alex repeats Daniels greeting right back at the same pace and with the same gestures but with his name in place of Daniels.

Suddenly wide eyed the man scrambles forward even as Alex jolts back. It's a mistake on both their parts. Once Daniel has finished clutching at his head and Alex grabbing at his suddenly very bruised feeling ribs, as if either action will help with their pain, the man perks back up to start asking questions.

“You’re from Earth?” the man inquires as he scoots his battered glasses back up his nose.

Alex really doesn’t like the implication that they're not on Earth.

“Please tell me that I didn’t get abducted by aliens,” Alex hopes he doesn’t sound as frazzled as he feels “I would literally never live it down, my foster sister would tease me about it for the rest of my natural life”

The man winces, which confirms things in a way a spoken response simply couldn't. Whoever has their money on ‘alien abduction’ in the CIA betting pool is going to make a killing when Alex gets back. He hopes they give him a cut of their winnings.

Refocusing on the issue at hand Alex starts figuring out what his cellmate knows.

“Ok,” he says just a bit too brightly “give me the sitrep, who, what, when, where, how, and why.”

Daniel looks startled, probably expecting Alex to spend a bit longer processing. Luckily for both of them, Alex has years of experience dealing with unbelievable situations and a track record for hairbrained escapes. He just needs a better read on the situation before he can start blowing things up.

“We're on P3R-5-something-something, we’re still somewhere in the Milky Way. My team and I were on a mission to explore the area; there’s some facinating ruins the drone we sent through the gate saw.”

Alex cuts him off “Explain the Gate, is that the weird portal I got tossed through?”

“Yes,” the man says “It’s called the Stargate, it connects to a vast network of other Stargates throughout the galaxy, all you need is the right gate address. The U.S. Air Force has been sending missions through the Gate in search of scientific and medical advancements.”

Daniel pauses to gather his thoughts but Alex impatiently gestures for him to continue.

“We encountered the species our captors are from on our very first trip through the gate. They’re called goa’uld, they claim to be gods but they're really a parasite that controls the hosts body-”

“The weird not-worms from the lab” Alex breathes with disgust and fear sloughing down his spine.

“You’ve seen one outside of a host?” 

Daniel looks visibly alarmed and Alex grimaces knowing the man is really not going to like the news he's about to give him next.

“Yeah - on Earth, in California right before I got kidnapped”

“Oh this is bad, we need to find my team and get out of here to warn General Hammond”

“Got a plan?” Alex asks hopefully

Daniel shakes his head “If we were locked up with the others we could probably fight our way out, or Sam could figure out how to force the door open. But with just the two of us we may have to wait for rescue.”

It figures that the first time Alex is held captive with an adult he still has to handle everything himself.

“I’m more useful than I look” Alex snaps and wanders over the bars of their cell.

The lock on the door is bulky and intimidating but doesn’t actually seem that complex on closer inspection. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and then glances at Daniel.

“Do you have wire or something that could be used as a torque wrench?’

Daniel staring at Alex in bewilderment is rapidly becoming the norm for their interactions but he obediently takes his glasses off his face and offers them to Alex. The arms of them look thin enough to fit into the lock and Alex won’t even have to bend them.

“Please try not to break them.” Daniel almost begs “My insurance is going to stop paying for new glasses if I go through too many more”

Alex laughs and Daniel responds with a wry smile

It's tricky to pick the lock, Alex’s house key is barely small enough to be used as a rake and eyeglasses don't make the best torque lever. It would be far easier to bump the lock, but they’re not at a great angle for that, and they don't have anything that could be used as an improvised hammer. Alex keeps at it despite his swimming head and the way his ribs twinge at his awkward position. Eventually, Alex and Daniel are rewarded with the faint snick of the lock slipping open.

Alex beams at Daniel “Let's find your team and get out of here”


End file.
